>I don't appreciate people who think their role in life is to teach me what is right or wrong.

>If I want something done, I have two choices that will ensure it will happen: ask the busiest person I know to get it done, or do it myself.

>People with time on their hands are kidding themselves.

> Sweat is the elixir of life. Working up a good sweat can usually cure what ails me. And think of the ways to get that perspiration going: exercise, physical labor, sex. All good.

>There is a difference between the emotion generated by listening to José Alfredo Jiménez lament la que se fue, and from listening to Emmylou Harris hold that perfect note backed-up by a melancholy steel guitar, but in the long run the difference does not matter.

>I am with the person who has turned out to be the great love of my life. I think that is what is meant when someone says they are blessed. I get all metaphysical about this because if left to me alone, I easily could have screwed it up.

> Happiness: watching my grandchildren play with their grandmother. The ability to play cannot be overrated and should not be underestimated.

>The road has not been straight or level or even safe; I am glad I didn't turn back.

> I would still choose Obama.

> My favorite ritual involves espresso, steamed milk and cinnamon. It's the closest I get to a religious experience.>My father (82) can fix anything, build anything, handle any crisis with understated grace. He is stubborn and set in his ways. In his shadow, I am inept. I love my father.

>My mother (83) has developed a different personality. Or maybe I am finally seeing her as a person rather than a symbol. She can enjoy life like a child, and find fault like the great-grandmother she is. I love my mother.

> Watching my father rehab from his stroke reminded me of the importance of balance in all things, not only for standing up.

> The nights of "one too many" are over for me but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good wine or scotch or dark beer. The best part is that I do mean "enjoy."

>Fear is motivation. I run, write, and pay my bills out of fear. I don't know what I am afraid of, but so far it has worked.

> In the recent past I have taught myself how to juggle, taken up yoga, returned to running, and I tried to teach myself how to play the guitar. The guitar thing did not pan out. What I really would like to do is learn the accordion, conjunto style.

>Nine years of war have changed the U.S. in ways we cannot fully understand, yet. And the changes are not good.

>I want to ponder the big questions like God and existence and art versus politics and whether the world is flat or round. But I also won't get rid of my cable system's On Demand feature.

> I'm a listener, not a talker. If it were possible I'd arrange a conversation with Emiliano Zapata, Mark Twain, and John Coltrane, open a bottle of wine, sit back, and listen.

>I'm so square I use words like "square."

>I'm so old school, I line up for recess when I hear a bell ring.

>I am a Chicano writer.

>I hate labels.

To all La Bloga readers and contributors: have a happy, prosperous, and healthy 2011.¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Feliz año nuevo to all La Bloga readers. Here are some end of the year traditions from Latin American countries.For this end of the year celebration, you can follow one or more of these traditions to have a wonderful feliz año viejo 2010 while you wait for el año nuevo 2011.

ArgentinaIn Argentina, the entire family gathers together around 11:00 at night to partake of a good table of traditional dishes. Just before midnight, people hurry out in the streets to enjoy fireworks. The first day of January is celebrated at zero hours with cider or champagne, wishing each other a happy new year, sometimes sharing a toast with the neighbors. People go to parties and celebrate until dawn.

BrazilThe Ano Novo (New Year in Portuguese) celebration, also known in Brazilian Portuguese by the French word Reveillon, is one of the country's main holidays, and officially marks the beginning of the summer holidays, that usually end by Carnival (analogous to Memorial Day and Labor Day in the United States). The beach of Copacabana (in Portuguese: Praia de Copacabana) is considered by many to be the location of the best fireworks show in the world. Brazilians traditionally have a copious meal with family or friends at home, in restaurants or private clubs, and consume alcoholic beverages. They usually dress in white, to bring good luck into the new year. Fireworks, offerings to African-Brazilian deities, eating grapes or lentils are some of the customs associated with the holiday. The city of São Paulo also has a famous worldwide event: the Saint Silvester Marathon (Corrida de São Silvestre), which traverses streets between Paulista Avenue and the downtown area. In other regions, different events also take place. At Fortaleza (Ceará) there is a big party by the yacht area. People gather together for dinner and for a show of one band/group that usually plays during Salvador´s Carnaval.

EcuadorEcuador celebrates a unique tradition on the last day of the year. Elaborate effigies, called Años Viejos (Old Years) are created to represent people and events from the past year. Often these include political characters or leaders that the creator of the effigy may have disagreed with. The dummies are made of straw, newspaper, and old clothes, with papier-mâché masks. Often they are also stuffed with fire crackers. At midnight the effigies are lit on fire to symbolize burning away of the past year and welcoming of the New Year. The origin of the tradition has its roots in pagan Roman and pre-Roman Spanish traditions still celebrated in Europe and which were brought to many countries of Latin-America in colonial times. Other rituals are performed for the health, wealth, prosperity and protection. For example, traditionally each person eats twelve grapes before midnight, making a wish with each grape. Popularly, yellow underwear is said to attract positive energies for the New Year. Finally, walking around the block with one's suitcase will bring the person the journey of their dreams.

GuatemalaIn the town of Antigua, Guatemala, people usually get together at the Santa Catalina Clock Arch to celebrate Fin del Año (New Year's Eve). The celebrations are centered around Guatemala City's Plaza Mayor. Banks close on New Year’s Eve, and businesses close at noon on New Year’s Eve. Starting at sundown, firecrackers are lit, continuing without interruption into the night. Guatemalans wear new clothes for good fortune and down a grape with each of the twelve chimes of the bell during the New Year countdown, while making a wish with each one. The celebrations include religious themes which may be either Mayan or Catholic.MexicoMexicans down a grape with each of the twelve chimes of the bell during the New Year countdown, while making a wish with each one. Mexican families decorate homes and parties, during New Year's, with colors such as red, to encourage an overall improvement of lifestyle and love, yellow to encourage blessings of improved employment conditions, green to improve financial circumstances and white to improved health. Mexican sweet bread is baked with a coin or charm hidden in the dough. When the bread is served, the recipient whose slice contains the coin or charm is believed to be blessed with good luck in the new year. Another tradition is making a list of all the bad or unhappy events from the current year; before midnight, this list is thrown into a fire, symbolizing the removal of negative energy from the new year. At the same time, thanks is expressed for all the good things had during the year that is coming to its end so that they will continue to be had in the new year. The celebration in Mexico City is centered around Zocalo, the city's main square.VenezuelaIn Venezuela, those who want to find love in the New Year are supposed to wear red underwear on New Year's Eve; those who want money must have a bill of high value when toast, those who want to travel must go out home while carrying some luggage, and so on. Yellow underwear is worn to bring happiness in the New Year. Usually, people listen to radio specials, which give a countdown and announce the New Year according to the legal hour in Venezuela, and, in Caracas, following the twelve bells from the Cathedral of Caracas. During these special programs is a tradition to broadcast songs about the sadness on the end of the year, being popular favorites "El año viejo", "Cinco pa' las 12" and "Año nuevo, vida nueva".

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Thousands of authors get published every year, leading readers to look forward to the new title by a favorite writer. Perhaps you got one for Christmas thus already know there are few comforts better than settling down to a new book by a favored author.

Unless it's the satisfaction of discovering good work by an emerging author and being able to share the news with one’s reading compañeras compañeros.

Because finding those new books and authors can be haphazard, here’s useful news.

La Bloga friend Teresa Marquez, in the course of professional duties as a university librarian, conducts annual surveys to identify emerging authors, that is, writers who have published one or two books.

With the new year hot upon us and gente likely asking “what are your new year’s resolutions?” a suggestion: make a resolution to support emerging writers by reading your way through the list. There are few better ways to support emerging authors than reading their work. OK, buying the book goes it one better. That's your new year's resolution, "I am going to read one new writer every month in 2011."

Pick and choose, there’s rich diversity listed. Teresa includes one 2008 emerging author (and the author’s earlier work), 10 for 2009 and 11 writers in 2010. Make a random choice, be experimental.

La Bloga has reviewed a number of these titles. Note, too, bloguera Melinda Palacio’s upcoming Ocotillo Dreams on Teresa’s 2010 list, though the publisher’s website now lists publication as March 2011.

Author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez must have been elated when a production company bought rights to develop Valdes-Rodriguez’ breakthrough novel, Dirty Girls Social Club, into an NBC television series.

What writer would not enjoy the thought of seeing one’s novel as a television series?

In the case of Dirty Girls Social Club, Valdes-Rodriguez wrote it to be a spirited, light-hearted slice of life comedy featuring six successful women of diverse Latina backgrounds: black, white, brown; Cubana, Colombiana, Puerto Riqueña, Chicana.

The plot resources of such a cast would send a faithful to the book teevee series’ ratings through the ceiling, like Roots did a generation ago.

Instead, what the scriptwriter wrought was television. Valdes-Rodriguez' interesting, intelligent characters reduced to lowest common denominator sluts and hot mamacitas.

Gone completely the author’s depiction of Latina diversity, her plotting of important issues in women’s lives like body image, adultery, coming out lesbian.

Replaced by—wait for it--las sucias as sluts, with group sex and T&A as the order of the day. Familias, don’t let your daughters grow up to be college students.

Although the novel has been optioned so all’s fair from the producer’s side, the author’s reaction has been visceral, ranging from ad hominem assessments of the producer’s qualifications to concluding racism motivates the rape of her novel’s characters by the scriptwriter. The pedo has been picked up by gossipmaven Perez Hilton and the blogosphere. You may wish to follow the story--and the comments--at Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’ author blog. http://alisavaldes.wordpress.com/

NBC sent the author a “cease and desist” letter for Christmas, looking to muzzle the author’s outrage at what the producer is doing to Valdes-Rodriguez’ novel. Peor, the author’s agency, CAA, has dropped her as their client on another project. I’m surprised Valdes-Rodriguez has not been required to emend from the author’s blog segments she published from the NBC-owned pilot script.

Hollywood bites, the author has learned. But would it not be Just if the author could have the last chew?

What if NBC produces the teevee series and no one watches? Given what Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez cites of the script she has read, NBC would earn the wrath of audiences in all age groups for putting crap like this on the screen. Worse would be if the flop hit Alisa in the future projects pocketbook.

The silver lining: NBC so dismays gente that large numbers turn off their televisions and pick up books instead. They read Dirty Girls Social Club and Valdes-Rodriguez’ current holiday heartwarmer, The Three Kings. As a result the quondam teevee audience is all the richer for reading and the author's readership make teevee all the more irrelevant.

Valdes-Rodriguez might think such an outcome worth the pain and blacklisting she’s begun to feel as doors slam in her face for speaking up in behalf of her work. It'll be frustrating if this incident sours more effective producers on developing the author's titles for film or teevee. If the production remains honest to the book, the audience will find it.

Here's wishing Alisa the best possible outcome from this altercation and the hardball fallout. Her work has been invariably entertaining and deserves to find the wider appreciation that comes of having your stuff on prime time television. Excoriation is what she's in for if the pilot project gets made. She knows this, so she's fighting for her life. Lástima.

On-Line Floricanto December 28th, Ending the Year That Was.

1. "Our Children Are Not Anchors" by Susana de Jesus Huerta

2. “To the Elders” by Hedy García Treviño

3. “One Dream / Un Sueño” by Francisco X. Alarcón

4. "What Kind of Indian Do You Think I Am? (For Poet Responding to SB-1070)" by Diana Joe

5. “Semillas” by Odilia Galván-Rodríguez

“If we are going to have an effect on the anchor baby racket, we need to target the mother. Call it sexist, but that’s the way nature made it. Men don’t drop anchor babies, illegal alien mothers do.” Arizona Senator Russell Pearce

Our Children Are Not Anchors

To Arizona Senator Russell Pearce since you are so concerned about the tactics of domination and because the destiny of dreams and justice will manifest in spite of you:

Our children are not anchorslike the ones dropped in Atlantic waters tounload African corpses en masse.

We don’t just drop our babies onto this landthe way bombs were dropped on Hiroshima andNagasaki.

The way words and promises are dropped from treaties.

Our children do not drop like collapsed lungsfrom small pox in clean bodies underwool blankets and thick air.

Our children are not the weights usedin that system of pulleys, noosed ropesover Oak and Magnolia branches tied tothe gravity of brown and black bodies.

They do not fall hard like strong brownsoldiers on front-lines holdingtheir breath to be madecitizens while pledging patriotism and pride.

Our babies do not keep uson these furrowed fields of crouching backsunder summer heat the waythreats to hire another force us to stayeven without running water, even withouta paycheck.

Our children are not anchors.

They do not fall.

They are already the root,complex connections centuries old, aflamewith the power of history, knowledgeof collective pain and promise.

They become. They bloom. They unfurl likelavender flowers and protest signs under desertsun. Even as seedlings they push throughconcrete, poisonous policies, andthe sting of barbwire borders.

Our children are the pulsating sky that singsthunder and bleedsto break open and burst forthlike monarch clouds

To those that came beforeto those that were confrontedby storefront windows signsthat read no Mexicans or dogs allowed.

I placed his walking stick into the groundI waved his walking stick at the moonand cried out for justice.

To those that came from the other side of themountain.

To the ancient ones that never spoke Englishor carried a drivers licenseI shutter to think how you wouldbe treated today in Arizona.

I remember the lanternsthe ringing of the bellsthe river flute you carved for me abuelito.

The heart of my people beats like a tight drumwe will not stumble we will not fall we must hold steady the linefor those that came before are walking ahead theyhave arrived in full armor andare waving the lantern of truth and justice.

In the moon light I see your facethat face of abuelito the gentle onewith the big beautiful brown handsweathered from working the land.

He never walked on stagehe never wrote a sonnetbut his very life was a poem.

Abuelo the man who taught me to kneel and askthe rivers permission before crossing.

Abuelo the man who scattered cracked cornto replenish the Winter dens of mice and deer who'swinter supply of food we had stolenwhen we gathered pinon nuts in the forest.

When you take from the earth you put back an offeringhe would say.

Those simple seemingly insignificant deedsthe lessons learned and yet he raised me an orphan childthe child of his child whom he took into his heart.

To the people that could stop a dangerous storm cloudwith the wave of a hand

To those that understood the call of the owl

To the people that could cure with herbs roots and flowersTo those that understood the weather the birds the moths the butterfly'sthey knew his name and he knew their flight plans arrivals and departures andwhat it meant for the harvest or the coming of Winteror the crops when the butterflies left or arrived and in which direction they headedor the density and the color of the foliage of the leaves upon the treesall this told them about the pending winter storms and how and whento gather the harvest.

They had survived the depressionthey had had survived the common hangings and so calledrepatriations of brown people in the 1940's.

These were the people of the cornthe children of the man god that could fly

Over there from the other side of the mountainthe man who showed me where the buffalo herdswere slaughtered.....the man who whittled me magic flutesfrom river willowsOver there he would say, we came from over there,from the other side of the mountain.

ONE DREAM

to Gaby, Carlos, Felipe, Juan, and all other Trailers of Dreams after the “Dream Act” failed to pass in the US Senate 55 to 41 votes on December 18, 2010

4. "What Kind of Indian Do You Think I Am? (For Poet Responding to SB-1070)" by Diana Joe

5. “Semillas” by Odilia Galván-Rodríguez

Susana de Jesus HuertaI am a first-generation Chicana, born and raised in San Jose, California, where I currently live with my husband, muralist/artist, William Moran. I come from Mexican parents who talked politics and justice at the dinner table and took us to union rallies and farm worker strikes as children. My mother taught me to speak up and be active. My father introduced me to liberation theology, which has greatly influenced my work as an educator. Though I have always been an activist at heart, I didn’t actually begin organizing until I started my college career at San Jose State University. In the shadow of Propositions 187, 209 and 227, I learned how to work with people in my community to bring change to our often ignored and segregated neighborhoods. I marched against the hateful propaganda and political lies that enabled the passage of such backward, racist policies. And I found my voice in community action that addressed injustice at the local level. It is this history that feeds me as an educator and has recently opened me up to the transformative power of poetry.

Today I teach at Foothill College, a community college in Los Altos Hills, California. I am blessed and grateful to have the opportunity to work with inspiring students who struggle with dignity and fight for their right to learn and become leaders in their own way. I teach writing, but it wasn’t until recently that I considered myself a “real” writer. Thanks to the encouragement and support of a few close friends who have believed in my writing, I applied to and was accepted into the VONA (Voices of Our Nation) writing residency program out of the University of San Francisco this past summer. It was in this program that I truly understood the value of being part of a writing community, and I am humbled to be surrounded by such passionate artists who dedicate themselves to creation. I am proud to declare myself a work in progress, relishing in my own revision.

Hedy García TreviñoHedy M. Garcia Treviño. Has written poetry since the age of eight. Her first poem came as a result of being punished for speaking Spanish in school. Her poetry has been published in numerous journal's and other publications. She has performed her poetry at numerous cultural events. She continues to write poetry, and inspires others to use the written word as a form of self discovery and personal healing.

Francisco X. AlarcónFrancisco X. Alarcón, award winning Chicano poet and educator, is author of twelve volumes of poetry, including, "From the Other Side of Night: Selected and New Poems" (University of Arizona Press 2002), and "Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation" (Chronicle Books 1992) His latest book is "Ce•Uno•One: Poems for the New Sun" (Swan Scythe Press 2010). His book of bilingual poetry for children, "Animal Poems of the Iguazú" (Children‚s Book Press 2008), was selected as a Notable Book for a Global Society by the International Reading Association. His previous bilingual book titled "Poems to Dream Together" (Lee & Low Books 2005) was awarded the 2006 Jane Addams Honor Book Award. He has been a finalist nominated for Poet Laureate of California in two occasions. He teaches at the University of California, Davis. He is the creator of the Facebook page POETS RESPONDING TO SB 1070 that you can visit at:http://www.facebook.com/pages/Poets-Responding-to-SB-1070/117494558268757?ref=ts

Diana JoeI am Diana Joe.I am a native of Brownsville,Texas.I presently reside on the Navajo reservation in a little town called Tsaile,Arizona. I am a grassroots Cultural Consultant,my experience and career counts with over 25 years of exchange on different fronts,mainly veered for the empowerment of traditonal education of tribal peoples . I work primarily in the United States but my work has taken me to the international community In various parts of Mexico,mainly with the indigenous communities of our Mexican tribes. I have many interests and hobbies,which I incorporate as part of my teaching and exchange methods,in and for my consultant facilitations.

My story-telling ability is also very important to me, as it brings my own personal indigenous background into perspective,especially when I do present to the local tribes here in the Southwest. I have been writting poetry since I was about eight years old. I love poetry. I have found that my writing enables me to free myself of the pains and troubles that come to people of color and or of economic disadvantage.

I am a product of farm worker generational families. I write a whole lot about the earth and nature as I became very near to the earth in my many years as a migrant. I am very active in human rights and earth protection issues. I am an activist from as far back as I can recall. I began working first with the migrant peoples in the farm labor camps and later went on to become involved in frontera issues along the US/Mx. border. I write about all these issues as well. I write to raise awareness and consciousness. I am an active curandera as it was passed to me by my mother and grandmother. I enjoy working with diverse people. I advocate for the rights of indigenous people so as to empower ourselves with the rights to practice freely our migratory rights.

Odilia Galván-RodríguezAuthor, Odilia Galván Rodríguez, is of Chicano-Lipan Apache ancestry, born in Galveston, Texas and raised on the south side of Chicago. As a social justice activist for many years Ms. Galván Rodríguez worked as a community and labor organizer, for the United Farm Workers of America AFL-CIO and other community based organizations and served on various city/county boards and commissions. She is the author of three books of poetry, of which Migratory Birds: New and Noted Poems is her latest edition. Her creative writing, both fiction and poetry, has been published in Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native American Women's Writings of North America; New Chicana / Chicano Writing: 1& 2; Here is my kingdom: Hispanic-American literature and art for young people, and in many other literary journals, and anthologies.

From 1998 – 2000 Odilia taught creative writing at the East Bay Institute for Urban Arts in Oakland California an art program for young people ages 15 – 23 whose goal it was to empower inner-city youth to become artists and activists; she has most recently worked as the English Edition Editor for Tricontinental Magazine, in Havana, Cuba under OSPAAAL an NGO, a non-governmental organization, with consultative status to the United Nations. She is also one of the facilitators of Poets Responding to SB1070 a Facebook page dedicated to calling attention to the unjust laws recently passed in Arizona which target Latinos.

Ms. Galván Rodríguez is hard at work on two books of poetry and a collection of short stories, and offers Empowering People Through Creative Writing workshops internationally.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Recently I returned home to El Paso, and as we drove back to Ysleta on the Border Highway a sense of sadness overtook me. My kids, Aaron and Isaac, have for two years been clamoring to go to Mexico. They have studied Spanish in New York City, where we live, and their classroom walls are covered with posters from Latin America and Spain. When we return to Ysleta to visit their abuelitos, that is the opportunity to transform the Spanish language and Mexico to more than just academic subjects, to eat an enchilada or an asadero, rather than just to lick your lips at pictures.

But my wife and I have said no, because of the rampant violence in Juárez. On this day we settled for stopping on the shoulder of the freeway, just after the Bridge of the Americas and on top of the Yarbrough overpass. My sons took photographs of Mexico and the infamous border fence they have studied in school. “It looks like the wall of a rusty prison,” one said. My niños smiled at me, as good sons do, but theirs weren’t really smiles. They were obedient, and acquiesced. Perhaps Aaron and Isaac silently questioned whether their parents were overly protective, or just old and narrow-minded.

I do want them to know the Juárez I knew as a child. But the current violence and the wall have separated us. It is no compensation to look at Juárez from afar, and I felt as disappointed as my children. What I know, what I want them to know, I can’t show them, because I will never willingly put them in harm’s way.

What many who have not lived on the border may not understand is how close El Paso and Juárez were, and are, even today. Close culturally. Many with families in both cities. Close in so many ways. When I was in high school in El Paso, my family always–and I mean every Sunday–had a family dinner in Juárez at one of my parents’ favorite restaurants: Villa Del Mar, La Fogata, La Central, Tortas Nico, and Taqueria La Pila.

It was going back in time, to the city where my father and mother met and were married. But it was also to experience another set of rules and values, to a mysterious country with more bookstores than I ever saw in El Paso, to tortas and open-air mercados, to primos who would drop everything to show me their horses, and even to my first funeral–the open casket after all these years has remained vivid in my mind. A young boy, the son of a friend of my parents, had been run over by a car. Juárez for me was primal and powerful; it was my history. I thought I understood it instinctually, even spiritually, and that is just when it baffled me the most. After graduating from Harvard, I spent a year in Mexico City, a Chicano Chilango, in order to decide whether I belonged in the United States, or en el otro lado.

On Monday just before we left for El Paso, I was trying to explain this to friends in Boston, at a Passover Seder. How Juárez was closer to El Paso, than New York City was to New Jersey. How people went to lunch in Juárez and were able to return to the United States in a couple of hours. How we used to go to Waterfil over the Zaragoza International Bridge (on the eastern outskirts of Juárez) for Easter picnics, clinking cases of Fantas, Sangrias and Cocas, for jarampiñados, pan dulce and pan francesito, and my personal favorite, homemade Mexican fireworks. All of what we could not find in Ysleta. Yes, it was that close, in the most trivial and profound ways.

I tried to explain to these Red Sox fans how when I went to Juárez as a child and as an adult in El Paso, it was more than just for food and tchotchkes. It was going to another possibility of being. The buildings were older than those in El Paso, and the streets more congested. The cobblestones and curbs were well-worn and shiny. The shoe shine boys snapped their red rags on shoes waiting atop hand-carved shoe-shine kits. I marveled at the men who fixed flats in Waterfil, their hands a deep brown, working quickly to snap a tire out of its rim with a few perfectly placed strikes of a tire iron.

Returning to Juárez was returning to the elemental, to a living history, to discovering an innate intelligence and workmanship that comes to be when you have to make do. Returning to Juárez was gaining an understanding of my father and mother. Despite backbreaking hardships, no money, and eking out a living in the desert of Ysleta, on weekends they would crank up their old stereo to listen to Javier Solis and Los Panchos. On their porch in Ysleta, in front of my mother’s rose bushes, the sun setting behind the Franklin Mountains to the west, they were happy and in love. But their indomitable spirit had been nurtured not in America but on the other side.

So Juárez was never a joke for me, as it was for some of my Anglo friends and not a few of my Chicano friends from El Paso. It was a portal to another world that felt at once deeply familiar and strangely fascinating.

On the other hand, El Paso was littered for miles with fast food chain stores and perfectly built highways where a human being walking seemed an oddity. In grade school, I once went to an event honoring the famous Mexican-American golfer Lee Trevino, and my parents bought me a t-shirt that declared in bright green letters, ‘I’m one of Lee’s fleas!’ But what I most remember about that day was a burly Anglo man strolling by with his wife and sniggering, “That’s one fat flea.” My pride turned to shame. In El Paso as in Juárez, I also fit in and did not fit in, but too often in Texas the ambiguity of this existence was laced with hurt.

Three years ago the Juárez I knew changed. An unprecedented orgy of drug violence exploded in Juárez. The government against drug cartels. Soldiers on Avenidas 16 de Septiembre and López Mateos, with machine guns anchored atop jeeps. Dozens of murders per week. Sometimes dozens of murders in one weekend. The breakdown of society, with hundreds of thousands fleeing the violence. Three years ago, we lost Juárez, as a place to show our kids where their abuelitos came from, and in so many other ways. My parents have not returned to their hometown in three years. This past that has shaped them, even though it is less than a few kilometers away, is now a forbidden, forsaken territory. It is a deeply felt loss for many of us in El Paso.

I am tired of pointing out that the billion-dollar drug habits of the United States and the millions of dollars of American guns illegally exported to Mexico are root causes of the drug violence. How often can you point out American hypocrisy and myopia on the drug violence in Mexico before you realize that you cannot force a people to understand what they do not want to see. I am tired of witnessing a corrupt local police force in Mexico, and an ineffective national government, which has failed to provide for the basic security of its citizens. For the moment, the hypocrisy, the idiocy, and the cheapness of life are too much to bear.

Thousands of lives have been lost. Neighborhoods have been abandoned. On the American side of the border, we hear precious few enlightened words from politicians, a reach even under the best of circumstances. Instead, electioneering demagogues have jumped at the opportunity to target the powerless, the dark-skinned, the other.

I just miss Juárez. I miss it as a place to show my children how their abuelitos began in this world. I miss Juárez as a place to appreciate another way to be. When will this nightmare end?

My only hope is how Juárez has, in part, come to El Paso. In relocated people, with Green Cards, who have fled the violence. In new restaurants and other businesses in El Paso, which once thrived in Juárez. Here, on this side, they wait for the darkness to pass. But even when a peaceful Juárez returns –and I know one day it will– it will not return to what it was. In the memories of those who survive will be what was lost for a few years, and perhaps forever.

[Sergio Troncoso is the author of The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, and The Nature of Truth: A Novel. He has a short story, "Nuts," in the forthcoming young adult anthology, You Don't Have a Clue: Mystery for Teens. Please visit his website and his blog, ChicoLingo. This essay first appeared in Literal Magazine: Latin American Voices.]